Wait a minute, Ryze isn’t even remotely new. So why am I doing an impressions article of him? Well, I figured that I’m reasonably good at this game and happen to have everyone unlocked (a fact that I’m not entirely proud to admit, but hey). So, for the sake of completion and increasing my own knowledge of League of Legends, I’ve been back and forth on the idea of writing impressions for every champion.

Now, I can’t promise this will be a terribly regular feature nor can I promise any sort of order. Jax was supposed to be first, actually, but I haven’t had enough recent games with him to write something nice. However, I can promise one thing: I will not be doing champions who have a remake pending (Evelynn and Twitch, for the most part) until that remake is complete. Also, please don’t take this as a guide. I’m not good enough to write guides, and even if I was there are plenty of resources out there, so I’d just end up parroting what someone else said anyway. Look at this more as a ‘Here’s how this champion looks and sounds, here’s how they play, here’s some miscellany.’ Anyhoo, I’ve wasted a good few minutes on the opening already, so let’s get to the actual post.

Ryze has always been an interesting champion to me after his rework. If you’ve never played Ryze or have no idea about him in general, it’s that he scales off the total amount of mana he has. This is unique because every other mage in the game (to my immediate knowledge) has only AP ratios. With Ryze, AP is more of an afterthought when the game’s stretching into 60+ minutes and you’re rocking 4500 mana.

Ryze’s model is one of the original ones, so it’s not too amazing. The tiny lightning arcs when he uses his ultimate are a nice touch, though. I look forward to see what Riot will do when his ‘project shiny’ model hits. I have to admit, though, that Ryze has one of the most badass skins in the game: the sadly now-unavailable Professor Ryze. Don’t let the splash art fool you, he’s still blue-skinned (the ‘brown’ comes from the lighting on the image), but it’s still a really good skin. Although his model appears to shrink significantly when it’s used… And that’s without mentioning the incredibly cool and impressive “Triumphant Ryze” skin, which is only available to those who win an official tournament. Look at that. So badass.

In my opinion, Ryze is probably the best mage to learn how to play a mage with. He’s completely point-click (his ultimate doesn’t count), has an absolutely massive mana pool, and after level six has great sustain. It also helps that he’s tanky as hell, especially after building Frozen Heart and Rod of Ages. I’m not lying when I’ve gone into a 2v1 situation at half health and came out at nearly full. However, Ryze isn’t completely invincible. He’s got a pretty bad early game. The low cooldowns will make you want to pop a spell every time it’s up, which really hurts until you get Tear of the Goddess.

If I had to compare Ryze to someone, for those of you curious about similar champions, I’d… be incredibly hard-pressed to do so. I guess I’d say Fiddlesticks, maybe? They’re both heavily based around point-click and can sustain fairly nicely (Fiddle’s drain is the stuff of nightmares). But at the same time, Fiddle’s got pretty normal cooldowns, scales off of AP, and it’s really easy to completely screw up his ultimate. Also, he’s pretty squishy.

So… I don’t know, as far as comparison goes. There’s nobody quite like Ryze. If you guys think of anything, let me know. Anyhoo, that’s me done for now, possibly until Monday. As always, thanks for reading and have a good’un. Oh, and have a nice weekend if I don’t post anything in the next few days.